Frustrated by a lack of informed and honest review websites covering a wide range of electronic music, I write them myself.

Friday, October 14, 2016

Shaded Explorer - Empatia

Silent Season: 2016

Shaded Explorer is Emanuele Pertoldi, a typically obscure person in the world of techno. Not that it’s his fault, mind you, as he’s released music only a few years now. He’s two LPs deep with Silent Season under the alias, with appearances on about a half-dozen compilations from such labels like Deep Electronics, Haar Records, and Ovunqve. Before adopting the Shaded Explorer moniker though, Mr. Pertoldi did put out a number of singles under his own name, across an equally eclectic list of labels (M_Grey, Subself Records, Evasion Room, I Cieli Di Orione). There’s more to Emanuele’s story (other scattered aliases), but this is about as much as Lord Discogs provided, and who are we to judge what information is divulged by The Lord That Knows All? Obsessive compulsive sorts who crave ALL the info’, that’s who!

Shaded Explorer may be obscure by regular techno standards, but as we’re dealing with Silent Season, the music on hand obviously skews towards the ambient and dub end of that spectrum. So I guess that wouldn’t make Mr. Pertoldi that obscure, as dub techno followers are a ravenous people, one that will consume almost anything that’s released within their scene. Me? Um, I just like supporting regional labels, that’s right. Speaking of, I really ought to get gathering more Nordic Trax tracks.

Anyhow, Empatia is the second album from Shaded Explorer on Silent Season, and as per the label’s manifesto, it features all the reflective moods one can hope for out of their dub techno. The first couple tracks (Resilience, Mental Decoupling, and Distant Connections later in the album) are pure ambient though, looping layers of meditative tones fed through a warm, dubby glow as best served while wandering the brisk dawn of coastal rainforests. Oof, that reads dangerously close to New Age bollocks, but the music most definitely is not. It’s, like, the cool meditation ambient music, that you’d find on all those cool compilations from the early ‘90s, when ambient and dub was first sexing things up in chill out rooms.

Actually, Empatia reminds me a lot of such two-decade old CDs, the music rather reminiscent of material coming out of Apollo and Beyond. For sure it’s significantly polished compared to the crusty ambient techno of days long past, but the songcraft is similar. Corresponded Serenity features a soft techno beat fed through dub effects as a pleasant pad hums in the background, When I Decided To Live goes more playful with spritely melodies, and Inner Treasures’ vintage shuffly rhythms and burbling acid is classic ambient techno to t’. Emanuele makes room for contemporary dub techno sounds too, Tomrum building upon a bouncy beat, L’Aura Marina more traditional Basic Channel dub, and Senza Fine allowing some experimental sound design in on the party. Overall, Empatia hits every Win checkbox I look for in this music, almost a too perfectly in fact, with little in surprises. Which is about the worst ‘criticism’ I can level at this album, but here we are.